


The Downhill Existential Crisis

by Netgirl_y2k



Series: PoI daemon AU [2]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-09 01:24:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7781443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Have you heard the theory that daemons are the external expression of a person’s soul?"</p><p>Shaw had never thought much of a scientific theory that took the existence of the human soul as read, and even less of the idea that an indifferent ocelot was the expression of <i>her</i> soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Downhill Existential Crisis

Shaw sat in the diner booth mopping up syrup with her last bite of pancake. 

Ameretat sat beside Shaw, staring out the window with studied indifference. A year ago the ocelot daemon would have been outside, or if she’d deigned to come inside she would have curled up atop a table of her own, or leapt up onto the bar to the alarm of the staff. Now the daemon sat next to Shaw, the tip of her tail flicking against Shaw's thigh as she twitched it back and forward. 

The diner door swung open and in strode Zoe Morgan. She was wearing stiletto heels and her bengal tomcat daemon wound around her ankles as she walked; how she didn't fall was a mystery to Shaw.

“Shaw.”

“Zoe.” 

Zoe slipped into the booth opposite Shaw; her daemon leapt easily onto the table bringing him eye-level with Ameretat. The tomcat daemon was half Ameretat’s size and roughly her equal in feline haughtiness. “Lionel tells me you’re still working alone.”

“I’m not working alone.” Ameretat yawned, flashing razor teeth and sandpaper tongue, and Shaw tapped her ear.

“Still," said Zoe. "I could loan you my tech guy.”

"Nice try." Shaw grinned. "Fusco told me that you already tried to pawn Leon off on him.”

Zoe sighed a put-upon sigh. "We were working a number out of my apartment, and I opened my fridge one day to find that squirrel daemon of his next to the milk. I was half convinced I was going to find it in my underwear drawer one day.”

"So get an office," said Shaw, "I think the library's still empty. I’m not the Thornhill Industries HR department, so why are you really here, Zoe?”

“Our Mutual Friend asked me to bring something to you.” Zoe placed her black leather bag on the table, and plucked a handful of napkins from the dispenser. She reached into the bag, and with the look of distaste that most people had when forced to handle other people’s daemons she placed a napkin wrapped weasel on the formica tabletop.

Zoe discreetly wiped her fingers with the napkins and Shaw said flatly, “Tell me that you stole that from a children’s petting zoo.”

“I don’t think they keep weasels in petting zoos.” Zoe tilted her head like someone was speaking in her ear; _somebody_ probably was. “I have to go.”

“Hey?” Shaw called, to give herself a minute before she had to deal with the weasel daemon and what it might mean. Zoe stopped, tomcat daemon rubbing at her ankles. “There’s a girl in D.C., Harper Rose, who I think would really appreciate Leon.”

"Thanks, Shaw. Good luck."

The weasel daemon perched between the salt and pepper shakers. You would have thought that one weasel would look pretty much exactly like another, but with the white blaze on his chest and the nick out of his right ear Shaw recognised Root's daemon. 

Shaw had been used to seeing Mac peering out from behind the fall of Root’s hair or scurrying up one of her sleeves, and she pulled her hands away from the table just as the weasel started eyeing up the sleeves of her leather jacket.

Shaw threw some bills onto the table and stood up to leave; out of the corner of her eye she saw Ameretat's paw flash out and scoop the weasel daemon towards her.

*

“Root’s dead,” the Machine, still using Root’s voice, said in Shaw’s ear. 

It wasn’t the first time the Machine had said it; Shaw had been ignoring her for a while now.

Shaw was sitting on a park bench; Ameretat was lying at her feet with one paw on top of Mac; the weasel daemon seemed happy enough with this turn of events. It was the same park where she thought she'd seen Finch's starling daemon watching her from a fence railing, but that might just have been a bird. There had been no sign of Reese's dog daemon since Samaritan had fallen. 

“I know people’s daemon’s turn to dust when they die,” the Machine tried again, “and I didn't mean to give you false hope that she’s alive.” 

Shaw rolled her eyes, then snorted in case she wasn't on camera.

In the accident where Ameretat had settled Sameen had felt the dust from her father’s eagle daemon patter lightly down onto her head.

She'd seen daemons turn to dust time and again during her career as a doctor, a marine, and an ISA operative. 

When Shaw was escaping from Samaritan she'd faced Lambert and his collie dog daemon. Daemons _never_ attacked people, but Ameretat had spent nine months in a cage, in spasms of pain whenever Shaw's body was convinced it was dying inside the simulations, and Lambert found 35lbs of outraged ocelot clawing its way down his back. The collie dog daemon had launched itself at Ameretat, which was when Shaw had fired. Lambert bled out and his collie daemon exploded leaving Ameretat to snarl and bat at motes of dust.

Shaw hadn't been there when Greer died, but God knew she'd spent enough time imagining that damn raven of his cawing its last as it dissolved into dust.

So people’s daemons turned to dust when they died, it was what they did. “Why is Mac still here?”

"Yeah, that surprised me. I suppose it surprised Mac, too. Poor little guy's been pining." The weasel daemon was napping across Ameretat's front paws, and couldn't have looked less like he was pining. “Have you heard the theory that daemons are the external expression of a person’s soul?”

Shaw harrumphed. She had never thought much of a scientific theory that took the existence of the human soul as read, and even less of the idea that Ameretat was the expression of _her_ soul. 

“Well, I’m pretty sure Mac is my daemon now.”

“You’re saying you have Root’s soul?” Shaw's tone was flat and disbelieving.

“I am 99.8% indistinguishable from her.” Root's voice didn't naturally lend itself to an apologetic tone, but Shaw could tell that was what the Machine was aiming for.

“Yeah, but you could be virtually indistinguishable from me or Finch or, shit, Donald Trump if you wanted.”

“But I _chose_ Root.”

“You and me both,” said Shaw; she exhaled and told Ameretat: “Bring the weasel.”

*

Shaw’s new place had a pretty impressive square footage and almost no interior decoration to speak of. 

Shaw kicked the door closed behind her. Ameretat had walked through first with Mac held gently in her jaws, like a lioness holding a cub.

“Spit him out,” Shaw ordered. "We don't know where he's been." 

Shaw flipped open the laptop on her desk, and the webcam light came on by itself. It was considered impolite to address other people's daemons directly, never mind touch them. Shaw picked up Mac by the tail and plonked him down on the keyboard. "Someone wants to talk to you, buddy."

“Hey, baby, I’ve missed you.” Root’s voice issued from the speakers, and Mac nosed pathetically at the screen.

"How's this going to work?" Shaw asked under her breath. 

Even as the Machine continued to sweet-talk Mac through the laptop speakers she answered Shaw. "I don't know, but I'm making it work with you, so–”

“Did you have a daemon before?” Shaw asked out of morbid curiosity. “If Mac is only your daemon now because you have Root’s–” Shaw couldn’t bring herself to actually say _soul_ out loud “–voice, did you have a virtual daemon before? Like, a tamagotchi daemon?”

“No,” said the Machine. “Like a lot of things since Root died, this is new to me.”

"And you think this makes you alive now?" Shaw accused, even though she knew that spoiling for a fight with an AI that was quasi-in love with her was a waste of time.

"I think it makes me _differently_ alive."

Ameretat padded over casually and sat next to Shaw, carefully avoiding looking at her. The daemon had been like that since Samaritan, staying closer than she had before, and the worst part of it was that Shaw didn't hate it.

"If somebody harms Ameretat it hurts you–" God knows Martine had tried, that damn spider daemon of hers scuttling across her shoulder "–and I don't know how it would effect me if Mac were hurt." 

"Fine, said Shaw. It wouldn't be the first time she protected something inhuman and annoying because Root had loved it; she was talking to both Ameretat and the Machine when she said, "But you're in charge of walking him and feeding him."


End file.
